With the skinks behaving like domestic animals, it was no trouble at all just to sit there, choose one’s specimen and simply drop the noose over its head as it investigated a Thermos flask, a sandwich, or a Coca-Cola bottle. Occasionally, there were so many around us at one time that we would make a mistake and catch the wrong one (a male instead of a female, say). The animal would then be released, and having indignantly given us a swift and painful bite, would continue its examination of our belongings as if nothing had happened.
At last, we had our quota of these enchanting tame lizards and packed up to leave Round Island. We were aching, tired, and sun-blistered, but we wouldn’t have missed the experience for anything. We had not seen either of the two species of snake (which was not surprising, considering their limited numbers) and we had not captured the strictly nocturnal gecko, but our collecting bags bulged with guntheri, the small, sleek skink, and the Telfair skink. We were well satisfied.
We set off across the blue, gently undulating sea, leaving Round Island behind us ablaze in the setting sun. It looked more bleak and barren than ever, but now we knew the patches of palms and steep-sided ravines that gave blissful shade, the banks of tuff that provided wind-eroded homes for the Red-tailed tropic birds, the fronds of the palms decorated with geckos, and the bald, hot dome of the island alive with the quick, glittering shapes of the little skinks. We knew that under the picnic tree a host of eager, elegant Telfair skinks formed a welcoming committee, anxiously awaiting the next visiting humans. To us, the island was no longer just a chunk of barren volcanic debris, sun-drenched, sea-washed and wind-sculpted, but a living thing as important, as busy, as full of interest as a human village, peopled by charming and defenceless creatures eager to welcome one to their hot and inhospitable home.
The sea was calm and the sky without a shred or wisp of cloud, so that the sunset lay along the horizon like a glowing ingot of gold, fading gradually to green as the sun disappeared. Most of the party slept. Wahab, having consumed a pineapple, a cucumber and some cold curry, was promptly sick, went a peculiar shade of grey, curled up like a cat and went to sleep.
We drove back the long and bumpy ride to Black River, and there we laid the bags with our precious cargo on the cool floor of Dave’s spare room and went tiredly to bed. The next morning we unpacked our catch and found, to our relief, that none of our captives was any the worse for their incarceration. The guntheri, velvety and glowering in a Churchillian manner, strolled nonchalantly into their cages. The little skinks skittered eagerly into their new environment, brisk, alert, each looking like the Salesman of the Year. The Telfairs were equally curious about their new home — a lavishly decorated aviary. We eased them out of their bags and they investigated every nook and cranny. Then, within five minutes, they were satisfied with their new quarters. They converged on us and, as if they had been born in captivity, climbed into our laps and accepted fat, black cockroaches and juicy lumps of banana from our fingers, in a most confiding and flattering way.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE FRUGIVOROUS FLIGHT
Wahab had stopped the car at a tiny shop where the owner and his entire family, from grandmother to youngest child, were absorbed in manufacturing chapatties and rolling them up with a filling of spiced lentils inside, by the light of glittering, yellow oil lamps. We purchased a goodly supply of these delicacies and then drove to the cool, moon-drenched hillside outside the town beneath a sky heavy with stars, where we sat and ate our chapatties and discussed our forthcoming bat- catching expedition to the neighbouring island of Rodrigues.
‘You will have to take fruit with you, of course,’ said Wahab wiping his fingers fastidiously on his handkerchief.
‘Take fruit? What on earth for?’ I asked, my mouth full of delicious chapatti. To take fruit to a tropical island seemed to me to be the Mascarene equivalent of taking coals to Newcastle.
‘Well you see,’ said Wahab, ‘there is very little fruit grown in Rodrigues and, anyway, now it’s the end of the fruit season.’
‘It would be,’ I said, ruefully.
‘Isn’t it going to be a bit of a problem?’ asked John. ‘I mean transporting fruit in a small plane.’
‘No, no,’ said Wahab, ‘you just pack it up as if it’s excess baggage, no trouble at all.’
We’d better take some ripe, some medium, and some green,’ I said, ‘like you do on board ship to feed animals.’
‘Yes,’ said Wahab, ‘and I will try and find you a Jak fruit.’ ‘What’s a Jak fruit?’ asked Ann.
‘It’s a large fruit that the bats are very, very fond of,’ said Wahab. ‘It has a strong smell, you see, and the bats can smell it from a distance.’
‘Is it good eating?’ I asked.
‘Oh yes,’ said Wahab, adding cautiously, ‘if you like that sort of thing.’
By the time our trip to Rodrigues was over, I had come to look upon Jak fruit as one of the tropical delicacies least likely to succeed in any culinary contest but at that moment, I only had a mental image of a host of bats flying straight into our arms at the merest whiff of its delectable odour.
The next couple of days we spent checking our nets and other equipment, reading up on Rodrigues and, whenever possible, snorkelling on the reef, reviewing the multi-coloured ever- changing pageant of sea life that lived on or around it. News drifted to us that Wahab was having difficulty in getting Jak fruit and that Rodrigues was experiencing its first rainfall in eight years. Neither piece of gossip seemed of vital importance and yet, had we known it, both things were to affect our plans. Two days before we were due to fly to Rodrigues, Wahab phoned. He had, he said, tracked down positively the last Jak fruit on the island of Mauritius and had commandeered it for us. He was sending it round by special messenger.
‘It’s rather ripe, Gerry,’ he explained, ‘so you should keep it wrapped up so that it doesn’t lose its scent, and keep it out of a high temperature.’
‘How do you suggest I do that?’ I enquired sarcastically, mopping the sweat from my brow. ‘I can’t even keep myself out of a high temperature.’
‘Your hotel room is air conditioned, isn’t it?’ asked Wahab. ‘Keep it there.’
‘My hotel room already contains twenty-four hands of bananas, two dozen avocado pears, two dozen pineapples, two water melons and four dozen mangoes, purchased for this damned bat catching. It looks more like a market than the Port Louis market does; still, I suppose the addition of one Jak fruit won’t make all that difference?’
That’s right,’ said Wahab, ‘and, by the way, this sudden rain Rodrigues is having. It may affect your flight.’
‘How?’ I asked, suddenly filled with anxiety, for any delay would cut into the time we had allotted for the bat catching.
‘Well, you know the airfield in Rodrigues is only an earth one.’ explained Wahab. ‘All this rain has made it very slippery. The plane yesterday had to turn back. Still, you may be all right.’ ‘Well, I hope to heaven we are,’ I said, feeling depressed. ‘If there’s too much of a delay, we’ll have to cancel our whole trip there.’